Taxpayer-backed solar plant actually a carbon polluter

Global warming radicals balloons continue to pop

Even as the Obama administration announces another $120 million in grants to boost solar energy, new reports indicate a centerpiece of the administration’s green-energy effort is actually a carbon polluter.

Located in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, the $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System benefited from a $1.6 billion Energy Department loan guarantee, and a $539 million Treasury Department stimulus grant to help pay off the loan.

Yet it is producing carbon emissions at nearly twice the amount that compels power plants and companies to participate in the state’s cap-and-trade program.

That’s because the plant relies on natural gas as a supplementary fuel.

According to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the plant burned enough natural gas in 2014 to emit 46,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. But Ivanpah, while in the cap-and-trade program, is still considered a renewable energy source because it technically produces most its energy from solar.

Built by BrightSource Energy Inc. and operated by NRG Energy, the Ivanpah project has been mired in controversy from the start.

Taxpayer advocates object to the federal support. Environmentalists say it would hurt the endangered desert tortoise and lament that 3,500 birds were “fried” by the heat produced by the plant in its first year.

But the natural gas factor raises the fundamental question of whether this plant — and others — are undercutting their own green energy gains by emitting carbon pollution in the process, while not producing anywhere near the level of electricity of a regular power plant.

“This is a prime example of when good intentions go bad,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute.

Solar and wind power plants typically require some form of supplemental fuel, to deal with weather changes.

Natural gas, used at several California operations, can be used during the evenings to help protect against overnight freezing and temperature changes that can hurt equipment.

Yet while natural gas is not as environmentally damaging as coal or oil, it is a fossil fuel generally not considered “green.”

Ivanpah’s original license allowed it to use millions of cubic feet of natural gas with the understanding the total would not exceed 5 percent of the energy the project gets from sunlight.

BrightSource originally estimated the plant’s main auxiliary boilers would use the gas for an average of an hour per day.

But in March 2014, they petitioned the California Energy Commission for permission to increase that to roughly 4.5 hours per day. In the petition, they cited a need to protect equipment and “maximize solar electricity generation.”

The company defended the plant operations.

“Less than 5 percent of electricity generated is attributed to natural gas, which … qualifies 100 percent of the plant generation as renewable,” NRG spokesman David Knox wrote in an email.

But the 5 percent figure does not tell the whole story — as California does not account for emissions produced when a power plant is not generating electricity, according to Ward.

So the actual percentage of natural gas use could well be higher.

“If it were any other energy industry besides solar, the plant never would not have been built,” said David Lamfrom, director of California desert and national wildlife programs at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).

Lamfrom said that “political pressure pushed this project through without proper input from the taxpayers and without them being adequately informed of exactly what kind of project this was.”

He said officials “generated enough momentum to make this project happen in order to meet the [deadlines for] the stimulus funding.”

According to Lamfrom, designers also erred in placing Ivanpah between the tallest mountains in the Mojave where there is significant cloud cover and dust which would interfere with the sunlight.

Burnett noted that low sunlight only increases the use of natural gas: “You can make solar power as cheap as you want. If the sun is not shining, or it is cloudy or rainy, it will require natural gas to ramp up [the plant] quickly when solar power goes offline. They say it is green, but that assumes that there is a power source without any environmental impact.”

Quotes & Notes

"Terrorism flourishes because they are protected by a Left-wing denial industry" . --- author unknown

"Facts are rarely allowed to contaminate the big-government utopian delusion of the Left" -- author unknown

"Without double standards, the Left/Statists/Liberals would have no standards at all" -- author unknown

"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!" -- Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) Economist and social philosopher

"And what is Fascism? Fascism is private ownership, private enterprise, but total government control and regulation. Well, isn’t this the liberal philosophy?

Liberals value theory over truth and facts

The conservative, so-called, is the one that says ‘less government, get off my back, get out of my pocket, and let me have more control of my own destiny.'" -Ronald Reagan

"Liberals sense of moral righteousness doesn't come from achievement - it comes from believing that you are a bad person... for a Liberal to be morally superior, they must paint Conservatives as morally inferior, even if they have to lie. It's an unearned sense of moral superiority."

"The left no longer makes arguments about policies' effectiveness. Their only argument is character assassination"

"The religion of Leftism supersedes the law, fairness or personal integrity."

"...liberals are big fans of freedom speech, freedom of expression, freedom of anything and everything - unless, of course, they disagree with whatever the “anything or everything” is." - Adam Corolla

"I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep money you've earned, but not greed to want to take someone else's money". - Thomas Sowell

"Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend?" -Abraham Lincoln

"The most intolerant people I've ever met are those Liberals who consider themselves most tolerant." -MB

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so." -Ronald Reagan

"The problem with Socialism (Liberalism) is that eventually, you run out of other peoples money" - Margaret Thatcher

"If you think criminals and lunatics are going to obey gun control laws, you're a special kind of stupid" -MB

"One thing you have to say about the Left: They never miss an opportunity to let the mask of hatred slip. It’s practically Pavlovian; they are so invested in the myth of their own righteousness that their “tolerance” fetish goes right out the window whenever they suffer the slightest affront to their delusional notion of how the world works." - Michael Walsh